Cops Suspect Parents In Missing British Girl Case

A related point is that Portugese citizens resented the fact that Portugese authorities were spending a lot of time and money on Madeline when hundreds of missing Portugese children were given far less attention.

So what's the reason for the differences? Here's my admittedly tentative view. Overarching everything is social class. Shannon comes from a council house in a deprived working class area of Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire. Her mother, Karen, has what one might call an unsympathetic domestic profile with seven children from five different fathers. In "respectable" working class eyes, she would be regarded as a member of the underclass and, by implication, the author of her own misfortunes.

Unlike the supposedly middle class McCann family, with their "respectable" careers in medicine, Karen lacks eloquence. Neither she nor her daughter are photogenic. There are not "cute" pictures of the girl and no video of her. The absence of moving images is particularly important for TV coverage, of course. The repetition of clips of attractive victims of crime is a common feature of TV news bulletins.

Though there appears to have been terrific local support for Shannon's family, there has been no national postering campaign. Of course, the disappearance occurred in England where, to be honest, young children do go missing without much publicity. The fact that Madeleine vanished in foreign parts also made a difference, raising deep-seated xenophobic fears among the millions of Britons who take foreign holidays.

Who decides the scale of coverage? Editors, of course, drawing on news values that they find it acutely difficult to discuss openly because they are laced with prejudice, sometimes unconscious and, more often than not, overt. It is not quite as crude as deciding what sells, but there is little doubt that they interpret what their audience wants. In terms of crime, as countless examples have shown previously, they divine whether the majority of their readers and viewers will be sympathetic to the victim.
The belief is that the audience must identify with the plight of the people involved. There is a hierarchy involved in choosing who gets most coverage.

There are other factors, of course, stemming from Karen Matthews's background and social conditions. She does not have friends and relatives with media savvy, as the McCanns did. The Matthews family do not have the networking connections nor, of course, the finances. It will be said that they don't have the PR back-up either.

In case commenters get carried away with that fact, and try to see it as significant, let me explain that the reason PRs initially got involved with the McCanns was due to the "spontaneous" media interest once the story broke. The British embassy supplied them with a PR to help them deal with journalists. The Matthews have not been subjected to anything like as much press interest.

I concede that the McCanns eventually put their PR campaign on a professional footing, but that was not the case in the first two weeks.

So there we have it. A nine-year-old girl goes missing and relatively little appears in print or on screen. A four-year-old girl goes missing and thousands of pages and hundreds of minutes of airtime are devoted to her in media across the world. Is it really, as I believe, all about social class?

Madeleine: Divers Search Reservoir

Martin Brunt
Crime correspondent
Wednesday March 12, 2008

A team of divers has resumed its search of a remote Algarve reservoir in the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann.

Diver searches the waterSo far they have recovered nothing but several lengths of cord, some plastic tape and a single white, cotton sock.

Human rights lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia is funding the private search in the belief that Madeleine's body was thrown into the Barragem do Arade shortly after being killed by an abductor.

He claims he was told of the girl's fate by an underworld contact.

It's the second time the lawyer has paid for divers to explore the reservoir which lies in rolling hills a 20-minute drive from Praia da Luz, the holiday resort from where Madeleine vanished in May last year.

In December - when Portuguese police refused to act on his claims - he paid around £3,000 for a first search.

Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, have dismissed Mr Correia as a self-publicist and believe there is no evidence to suggest there is any link between their daughter and the reservoir.

They don't believe Madeleine is dead and want any search to concentrate on finding her alive.

Mr Correia told Sky News: "The Portuguese authorities refused to carry out the searches themselves, as is their obligation. Any possibility that she may be in the lake should be taken seriously and duly investigated.

"They completely refused to give my tip-off any credibility whatsoever, so I took it upon myself to search."

He said that whatever his divers recover will be handed to the McCanns' private investigators as potential evidence.

Five divers are being helped by two firefighters who specialise in the recovery of bodies.

Their search is complicated enough, but they've also discovered that the bottom of the reservoir has layer of soft mud four metres thick, into which a weighted body would sink and disappear.

Last week, Portuguese police briefed a senior British detective on questions to be put to the seven friends who were dining with the McCanns on the night Madeleine disappeared from the holiday apartment where she was sleeping with her twin brother and sister.

That re-questioning is expected to be carried out in the next few weeks.

Police were tipped off a week before they raided Shannon Matthews flat

Last Updated: 2:44am GMT 16/03/2008

Investigators were told to search the flat where Shannon Matthews was found a week before police finally broke down the door and rescued her.

A neighbour of the man arrested in connection with her disappearance rang a helpline to suggest that officers investigate the top-floor flat.

But it was not until six days later that police knocked on the door of Michael Donovan's home in Lidgate Gardens, in the Batley Carr district of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Moments later they found Shannon hidden in the base of a divan bed.


Shannon Matthews

Last night Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, said she was "overwhelmed" to see Shannon again.

"I just couldn't stop crying, knowing she's back where she belongs and she's safe. I never gave up hope."

After her rescue on Friday, Shannon was immediately taken into the care of trained police officers, who now expect to spend the next few days gently trying to discover what happened after she went missing on February 19.

Edward McMillan-Scott, the Conservative MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, demanded to know why Mr Donovan, an uncle of Shannon's stepfather, Craig Meehan, had not been questioned sooner, given that relations were often involved in cases of this kind. Police sources said there were "literally hundreds of people" in a "huge family network" that required a large amount of resources.


Residents of Dewsbury Moor tear up the missing girl posters to celebrate the news that Shannon Matthews was found

But it appears that specific information was provided on Mr Donovan - who was born Paul Drake but changed his name - that could have helped investigators to move more swiftly.

Mr Donovan's neighbour, Melvin Glew, said that around midday on March 8 he rang the Missing People charity's number, printed on hundreds of posters displayed around the town urging people to find the missing nine-year-old.

Mr Glew had grown suspicious of Mr Donovan, whose flat was 100 yards from his. He told The Sunday Telegraph: "He was always very strange, but from the moment Shannon went missing he began to act very suspiciously."

Mr Glew's fears had been sparked by his knowledge of his neighbour's troubled family life. Mr Donovan, 39, was said to have been deeply upset when his former wife won a bitter dispute for custody of their two daughters.

But what persuaded Mr Glew to act was an incident a week ago, in which a man tried to visit Mr Donovan after arriving in a car with "Find Shannon" posters in the windows.

Mr Donovan did not answer the door, although Mr Glew was sure he was in. Mr Glew, 62, a forklift driver, said: "I was dead suspicious. I rang the helpline number and said it would be a good idea if the police got into his house and had a look.

"I gave them his address but nobody got back to me and I heard nothing more. I was really surprised it took them this long to get round to searching his place. Thank God they did."

Mr Glew is not the only person to have alerted the authorities to their suspicions. Ryan Baynes, a father of two, called police shortly after Shannon's disappearance to tell them Mr Donovan had behaved strangely at a family funeral six weeks earlier, bouncing Shannon on his knee and paying her "far too much attention".

Detectives eventually switched their attention to Batley Carr five days ago, after another resident, Julie France, reported finding a white bag containing what is believed to have been Shannon's swimming costume, worn on the day she went missing. Police visited Mr Donovan's flat at 12.30pm on Friday.

A spokesman for Missing People said: "We received information suggesting Shannon was at Lidgate Gardens and this was passed to the relevant authorities. We cannot say when we received it until it has been verified."

as I said each abduction is unique. I'm obviously pleased she's been found...but why have police taken days to re unite her with her mother?

I'm not accusing the police of perjury...but it has been known.

Ask any Irishman or Muslim. :wink:

The McCanns will receive a public apology, read in open court
Four newspapers are set to pay damages to the parents of Madeleine McCann, after settling a libel case, the BBC has learned.

The Daily and Sunday Express, along with the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday are to pay a "substantial" sum and print front-page apologies.

Kate and Gerry McCann's lawyers said that some of the newspapers' articles were "grossly defamatory".

The couple say all the damages will be donated to the Find Madeleine fund.

The Daily Express is to carry a full front-page apology in Wednesday's paper, while the Star's apology will take over half its front-page.

The papers are expected to apologise for suggesting Kate and Gerry McCann were involved in their daughter's disappearance.

The action relates to more than 100 stories across the four titles, including 42 printed in the Daily Express.


I think this is an amazing stand-down, u-turn, by the Express newspapers
Media commentator Roy Greenslade

Under the terms of the settlement - at Kate and Gerry McCann's insistence - Express Newspapers' barrister will also read out an apology before a judge at the High Court on Wednesday.

The Express group has agreed to all the McCanns' requests. It is also paying all their costs.

The McCanns have promised that the damages will be paid into the "fighting fund" set up to pay for efforts to find their missing daughter.

'Trust and credibility'

Media commentator Roy Greenslade said that for two national newspapers to carry front-page apologies at the same time was "unprecedented".

"I think this is an amazing stand-down, u-turn, by the Express newspapers," he said.

"I think when people realise that more than 100 stories have been complained about as being grossly defamatory, it will annihilate the Express' readers sense of trust and credibility in their newspaper." [/i]

Four newspapers are set to pay damages to the parents of Madeleine McCann, after settling a libel case, the BBC has learned.

The Daily and Sunday Express, along with the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday are to pay a "substantial" sum and print front-page apologies.

Substantial" damages are being paid to the parents of Madeleine McCann by four newspapers, after they settled a libel case over reports of her disappearance.
The Daily and Sunday Express, and the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday, are also printing front-page apologies.

They say they were wrong to suggest the couple, of Rothley, Leicestershire, were responsible for Madeleine's death.

The McCanns say the money will go to the find Madeleine fund. She went missing in Portugal on 3 May last year.

From the news item provided:

Quote:

Four newspapers are set to pay damages to the parents of Madeleine McCann, after settling a libel case, the BBC has learned.

The Daily and Sunday Express, along with the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday are to pay a "substantial" sum and print front-page apologies.

Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday are not sources that I use. More reputable journalism sources were also critical of the McCanns.